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A crisp breeze ushered Faith and Buffy through the cemetery, dead leaves swirling against headstones and collecting in the doorways of mausoleums. The moon was out, one day past full, making it what should have been an excellent night for slaying. They even had extra-pointy stakes, freshly sharpened. Unfortunately, someone had forgotten to tell the dead (un or otherwise) there was a party on. They might as well have been in Peaceville, Nebraska.
“Still can’t believe you decided to rock the leather pants, B.” Faith’s voice slid up her spine like a rough fingertip, and she fought down the urge to jump - she’d only looked away for a second, but dark hair and dark jacket and stupidly sexy dark jeans that might as well have been sprayed on did a crazy-good job of blending Faith in with the night. Made it easy for her hunting “buddy” to sneak in on her and get hands around her waist before she noticed.
She was going to be annoyed any second now. Unlikely though it was, someone--even one of the Scoobies--might see. Any second...
Faith purred in her ear with a voice like a particularly hungry cat who’d never heard the word ‘domesticated,’ or thought it applied to humans if it had. “Gotta say, they made your ass look de-fucking-liciously sexy. We meet the undead, bet you’re giving ‘em wood in more ways than one.”
Buffy made a face, still squirming - half uncomfortable, half things-not-for-thinking-in-graveyards. “I think I liked it better when they were just after my blood.”
A smoky laugh filled her ears. Hands slid to her hips and kept moving south. “Hey!” she yelped, turning and grabbing Faith’s wrists. Want and amusement sparkled in the other Slayer’s dark eyes, and Buffy couldn’t help smiling herself. “Let’s keep work and recreation separate, okay?” She smirked flirtatiously. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
Faith pouted, which should not have been as pretty as it was. “Worth my while, huh?” She squeezed her nails into Buffy’s waist, not trying to break the grip on her wrists, and leaned in until their lips almost touched. “How you gonna do that, good girl?”
Three weeks since Homecoming, and now Buffy’s heart pounded only in a good way when Faith did things like that. She could get used to the excitement without fear or pain. What did they call that again? Oh, right. Fun.
She grinned, green eyes blown wide. Her own voice was pitched at a R-rated frequency, and she definitely wasn’t worrying about the Scoobies anymore. They’d bought her blowing off the Homecoming dance, part of her mind noted smugly; they’d buy anything. “Toys,” she breathed, before pulling away and strolling jauntily into the night. Behind her, Faith made a sound in her throat that slid past growl on its way to being way beyond R-rated.
Buffy’s pulse jumped, and she put a little more sway in her step to show how totally not afraid she was. Tiger or not, Faith was going to have to wait for this one. Truth be told, she was really starting to enjoy messing with Faith’s imagination - the girl had a motor like a race car and a seriously light trigger pull.
Just as long as it didn’t wind up with them making out in the library stacks again. That kind of heart exercise, she could do without.
“We so shouldn’t be doing this,” she’d breathed into Faith’s neck, and the taller girl had just flashed a grin full of ivory teeth before shoving her up against the bookcase and winding a hand around the back of Buffy’s neck. Sensible, smart things like objections and caution and any sense of where they were went fuzzy and caught fire at the edges when Faith’s mouth locked onto the pulse of her throat, biting and sucking like she was planning on leave a ten-day bruise if Slayer healing didn’t get in the way. When Faith’s hands started touching her the way no boy would ever have dared think about if he didn’t want to get his face slapped - all hard squeezes and eager, bold fingers. When she heard the frightened, soaked excitement of her own whimper buried in the dark silk of Faith’s hair.
Shaking her head, Buffy unzipped her jacket, letting the chill air dampen her burn. Casually, of course. Calm, even. Totally under control.
She scanned the area again in a very serious way. Not at all as a handy distraction from the delicious, naughty thoughts twisting around in her brain. Yup, pure professionalism here, people.
Still nothing to stab. Lame.
“Deadsville, B.” Faith’s voice was smoke and fire, no matter how laid back she tried to make it sound. Definitely not thinking naughty thoughts, nope. “I say we do one more sweep, call it a night.”
Buffy was just about sure she could feel those dark eyes burning a hole in her back.
She slowed, tossed Mr. Pointy from hand to hand, nodded. “Sounds good. I guess even the monsters take nights off.” As Faith pulled up to her side, her peripheral vision caught a flash of dark hair and grace born of raw power. A long shiver ran down Buffy’s spine, her body acknowledging the other Slayer they way it recognized the power in a thunder storm or an earthquake. They resonated from each other like two struck bells, and what had been uncomfortable and jarring from the moment they’d met had settled into something not just reassuring but intoxicating. The night vibrated with them, answered them, moved with them.
“Yeah, sure,” she answered reflexively, a fraction of a second before Faith asked, “Want to hit the docks? I hear there might be a nest down there - Umpa demons or something.” They froze in the same step and turned in the same motion, green eyes locked onto fathomless brown, startled and thrilled. Buffy felt Faith’s pulse jump with her own, shared the same long exhalation of wonder and heat.
They laughed, sharp and wild, so alive that the earth under their feet seemed to pound with it. It drove them racing to the waterfront. Nobody said “first to the sea’s the winner.” Nobody had to. The challenge was burned into their muscles, into the bones beneath Sunnydale blurred around them before the girls stopped together, leaning against a shipping crate as they laughed and caught their breath.
The salt tang of the air pushed Buffy’s memory into gear--another night, another lover, a ring--and deflated her mood. Pushing the thoughts away, she shook her head and smiled.
“Oof. Okay. Where’s this nest?”
Faith caught the subtle darkening of Buffy’s mood, and did what nobody else in her life would have thought to do for her - ignored it. There were times the way Faith accelerated past glitches and stops, windows on pain or grief, bothered her; it made her wonder just what Faith might be carrying around inside that she didn’t want to let others get a look at, or whether she just didn’t want to admit the past or the unspoken might matter at all. Mostly, though, it was just a relief. Faith never wanted to talk it out - she was just there, five by five, ready to bounce to the next thing.
She didn’t even put words to an answer, this time. Fingers around Buffy’s wrist and a long-limbed trot down the street, that was good enough for her.
They rounded a corner and approached a warehouse. Buffy’s eyes darted around, noting exits and nearby buildings, trying to guess what kind of floorplan might await them. At the rear of the building, Faith shot her a grin before jumping up higher than any normal sixteen-year-old girl--or any normal human, honestly--to grab the end of the fire escape and drag it down.
The Bostonian held the ladder down with one foot, leaning out of the way and making a grand gesture for Buffy to go first. How did she manage to look gallant while breaking and entering?
“Slayers from above? I like it,” she quipped, climbing the ironwork.
“We should do it more often. Make it our schtick.” Faith bounced up the ladder behind her, all vibrant energy, and made a soft wolf-whistle as Buffy started up the stairs ahead of her. “If it gets me more views like this, I say we do it five times a night.”
Stake at the ready and her back to an air conditioning unit, Buffy let her eyes roam down Faith. “Only if you go first half of the time.”
“Deal.” Faith flashed her a hungry smile, then grabbed the edge of the final ladder leading to the roof and vaulted it with a single powerful flex of her legs. “Up you come!”
It took all of three seconds, once her feet hit the roof, to realize that she’d absolutely and unquestionably been had. First of all, demons didn’t usually set up a sleeping bag, blankets and a cooler on the top of buildings. Secondly, Faith wasn’t the sort to sit down on the job - much less root around in said cooler. Third, she had a sudden sinking suspicion about the fact that she’d never actually heard of an Umpa demon before.
Maybe Giles had a point about studying more.
She padded over to the night picnic, trying to glare but getting more tenderness than exasperation.
“I didn’t realize that Umpas liked root beer.”
“You kidding? They work in a candy factory, B. What do you think they drink?” Presenting Buffy with one chilled bottle and popping the cap off the other with her thumb, Faith mustered a smug smile that any snake would have envied. “Let me guess - didn’t read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when you were little?”
Okay, now the glaring was easy. “Mom fed me whole wheat pancakes . I was barely allowed to mention sugar in her presence.” She covered her growing smile with a hand, feigning tears. “Oh god, I’m having a wheat-germ flashback!”
“Quick, I brought candy bars.” Faith caught her wrist and tumbled her down on the blanket, pressing one of said bars into her hand and a kiss to her lips in the same rough motion. “Take refuge in the chocolate, B.”
Swooning dramatically into Faith’s lap, Buffy clasped both hands around the Snickers. “My hero!” She batted her eyelashes for added effect.
Faith’s arms slid around her, cupping her as tight as she’d feighened holding the Snickers, and there was something wild and painfully vulnerable in Faith’s dark eyes when they looked down into hers. “Never really been the hero type, B. Probably ought to be fearing for your virtue around me.” It was supposed to be funny, a joke, ha-ha... but the raw, ugly sincerity bleeding into it stole all the laughter out of the air. “You’d do better with somebody else for that hero thing.”
Buffy slowly raised a manicured hand and laid it lightly on Faith’s face like she was afraid of spooking an injured animal. “Everyone I know, even the smartest and the strongest, messes up sometimes. Superhuman is still human.” Her thumb brushed the other girl’s cheekbone. “We’re fighting the good fight, and it’s a long enough fight that we’re both going to make mistakes sometimes.” She squeezed Faith’s shoulder with her other hand. “And sometimes we get to be heroes.”
Faith’s lips compressed, teeth working at the dark softness of them, and then she cracked a smile that was all guts and no worries. “Do they hand out the lame speech packets in Slayer 301, or what?”
A shadow left Buffy, her smile bright in the light of the street lamps. “I got mine in the welcome bag with the free stake and good-bye card from your normal life.” Extracting herself from Faith’s lap, she took a sip from her root beer, opened the Snickers, and stretched her legs out alongside the other Slayer’s. “I’ve never thought the words “warehouse” and “picnic” in the same sentence before, but it works.” She stared out over the edge of the roof and at the ocean beyond, the water dark and primal past the harbor lights. “Nice view.”
“I kinda like it. Makes me think of running.” Faith felt the subtle stiffening of Buffy’s shoulders, and her arm slid reassuringly around the tight line of the smaller girl’s waist. “Not that way. Just... ships going and going and never having to stop, the whole world out there just waiting for them. Water that goes all the way down to places that are so weird you gotta find a scientist to explain what goes on there. Sky that goes on forever. A whole world that just doesn’t stop, and all we gotta do to get there is just run.” She paused, as if startled by the way the words had tumbled out of her, then laughed sharply. It took some of the color out of her face. “Plus I guess maybe steal a boat. Or a plane. Forget it - stupid thought.”
Wrapping her own arms around Faith, Buffy smiled softly. “It’s not stupid. It’s...it’s beautiful, really.” She leaned into the other girl’s solid warmth. “Some days I’m sure I’ll never get anywhere but Sunnydale for the rest of my life. It’s good to be reminded that there’s more out there.”
Faith pressed a kiss into the soft gold of Buffy’s hair as they watched the moon sinking down toward the edge of the horizon, soaking the water with silver and ivory, and her voice was so muffled and low in her throat that Buffy felt more than heard it. “I’ll take you to London or China or whatever. They gotta have demons there that need slaying, right?”
Eyelids drooping, Buffy twined their fingers together. “We can get that language tutor thingy and learn how to kill things in Chinese. Or Italian. I hear they have great shopping in Italy.” She shivered, cold everywhere except where Faith was touching her, unwilling to let go.
“I like shopping.” Faith pulled one of the blankets over them, dragging Buffy back into her lap in the process, and leaned back against one of the small brick boxes on the roof that probably held a power monitor or a stairway door or something. It was there to lean against, so Buffy could lean against her. That was, and she smiled into the curve of Buffy’s temple at the thought, the most important thing it could possibly have been there for. “Get you some more of those pants, B, and a new jacket to match. And a motorcycle. You’d look hot on the back of motorcycle with me.”
Snuggling closer, Buffy let her eyes close altogether. “I get to drive, too.” She grinned, lazily wicked. “Or just get my own. Make it pink.” Now she was warm all over, and as exposed as they were, in the sketchy part of town, with as much crazy shit that she’d have to deal with in the morning, she felt safer than she had for about a year. Maybe longer than that.
“If you sit on the back of my definitely-black bike, B, you can feel me up while I drive,” Faith murmured into her ear in a truly breath-stealing display of logic. Or maybe it was the way Faith’s arms and the solid muscle of her body under Buffy’s surrounded her that was stealing her breath. Maybe.
Those soft lips touched her throat, leaving dark lipstick on the hollow where her pulse throbbed. Definitely maybe.
Abandoning the ‘sleep’ agenda, Buffy’s body arched up into the kiss, fingers pressing into Faith’s thighs. “Oh,” she half-moaned, “that makes sense.” Pushing herself farther back into Faith’s heat, she barely noticed the blanket pooling around her waist.
Faith’s dry, clever fingers made short work of the fastener and zipper of her pants, and the husk of a laugh that Buffy’s arch provoked sent a hot shock down her spine - electricity jumping from the lips at her ear to the fingers teasing her open, grounding itself through her body. That low, hungry alto hitched on a spike of fire, then settled down to vibrating Buffy’s thoughts to pieces. “I’m very … fuck , B, but you’re hot for me... what was that word? … oh, right. Very convincing.”
A half-whimper, half-moan stuck in Buffy’s throat at Faith’s touch. She leaned to the side, twisted around to suck sloppy kisses along the other girl’s jaw, hands flexing awkwardly against the taut muscle of Faith’s thighs as she tried to answer the caresses in kind. It didn’t last, all her coordination disintegrating under those calloused fingers, and soon it was all she could do to wrap her hands into the dark mass of Faith’s hair and gasp for breath.
Faith growled, vibrating through both of them with the hard sound of her eagerness, and sank her fingers into Buffy with a rapacious, merciless hunger that knew nothing about limits, time, discretion, safety, fairness, or any damn thing except prying every last spark of pleasure Buffy’s nerves could produce out of her one agonizingly delicious press or twist or thrust at a time. One night with Angel had taught Buffy what it was like to make love, but nothing in her life before Faith had given her any idea what it was like to be fucked or, for that matter, to be worshipped.
The last three times the world blew apart--or was it four? five?--the sensations were so intense, Faith so relentless, that Buffy couldn’t find the border between pleasure and pain any more. It was just sound and heat, a series of explosions that she was half-certain would register on seismographs.
Slowly, things started making sense again. She could find all her limbs and even wiggle most of her digits, distinguish between up and down, think simple thoughts with small words. The sky was a beautiful glowy blue, and she realized that there were only minutes before sunrise. She couldn’t quite place why or if that was important.
Faith was stretched out next to her, completely naked and looking at her like she was the Holy Grail or something. Blinking rapidly, Buffy curled an arm around her waist.
“Um. Wow.”
“Mmm,” Faith replied with a certain sort of eloquence, and kissed her until the world did the spinny thing again.
The sun rose the rest of the way without them.
Another...sometime later, Buffy’s brain tried to reboot again. She had ended up happily nestled against Faith’s shoulder, untidily draped in the sleeping bag and the blanket that wasn’t a tangly mess under them and was vaguely enjoying the view. Blue sky, blue water, floaty ships in the distance. Pretty.
She frowned vaguely. “Things. Today. Didn’t we have things for today?”
Faith just laughed, lazily content, fingers trailing through the slant of morning sunlight like she was trying to wrap it around them. She’d certainly done a good enough job wrapping Buffy around her fingers that Buffy wasn’t ready to bet she couldn’t.
Letting her fingers slide down Faith’s wrist, she smiled. “Good point.”
Things could wait.